Mascara history raises eyebrows
QUESTION What is mascara made of? What makes the thousands of variations available different?
THE USE of mascara dates back to antiquity. Ancient Egyptians used kohl, which was made from various toxic ingredients such as lead, antimony and soot, to darken both their eyelashes and eyebrows. This served both cosmetic and practical purposes, as they believed it protected their eyes from the sun and warded off evil spirits.
Around 1910, Eugene Rimmel, a French-born British perfumer, created cake mascara by combining petroleum jelly and coal dust, which users would apply using a brush.
Most modern mascaras use carbon black or iron oxide as a base. Carbon black is a deep non-reflective black colour.
Iron oxide is more versatile; it can give variety to mascara shades, mostly browns but also yellow and red colouring.
Other common colourants include ultramarine and ferric ferrocyanide (blue), titanium dioxide (white), carmine (red), chromium oxide and chromium hydroxide (green), and manganese (violet).
There are also a whole host of organic dyes available, in particular Azo dyes, synthesised from aromatic amines that can create more than 2,000 colours.
Modern mascaras typically also contain waxes and thickening oils such as lanolin, mineral oil, paraffin wax, castor oil, carnauba wax, and candelilla wax, to preserve the mascara and give it body.
Karine Rowland, Manchester.
QUESTION Why was the wife of George I known as the Prisoner of Ahlden?
THE PRISONER of Ahlden refers to Sophia Dorothea of Celle, the repudiated wife of George I, who was imprisoned in the Castle of Ahlden in Germany from 1694 until her death in 1726.
Sophia Dorothea was born in 1666. She was the daughter of George William, Duke of Brunswick-Luneburg, and his mistress, Eleonore Desmier d’Olbreuse.
Sophia married her cousin, George Louis, Electoral Prince of Hanover, in November 1682, after reportedly shouting, ‘I will not marry the pig snout!’ The motivation for the marriage was financial; George’s mother Princess Sophia of the Palantinate stated: ‘One hundred thousand thalers a year is a goodly sum to pocket, without speaking of a pretty wife, who will find a match in my son George Louis, the most pigheaded, stubborn boy who ever lived, who has round his brains such a thick crust that I defy any man or woman ever to discover what is in them.’
Following the births of their children George Augustus (born 1683) and Sophia Dorothea (born 1687), George took up with his mistress Melusine von der Schulenburg. Sophia Dorothea responded by taking a lover of her own, Count Philip Christoph von Konigsmarck. George ended up physically attacking his wife over her affair and Konigsmarck disappeared in 1694.
On December 28, 1694, the marriage was dissolved and Sophia Dorothea was found guilty for ‘maliciously leaving her husband’. She was sent to Ahlden House, a stately home in Lower Saxony. She tried to secure her release by sending her former husband a letter of condolence after his father died in 1698. George did not respond.
George became King of Great Britain and Ireland on August 1, 1714. His mistress Melusine became Duchess of Kendal and Munster. Sophia Dorothea died in lonely isolation on November 13, 1726.
Danny Jacobs, Chatham, Kent.
QUESTION What is the origin of the term whippersnapper and is it a compliment or an insult?
WHIPPERSNAPPER is an insult. It originally referred to ne’er-dowells or layabouts, though the meaning has softened over the years. The word probably arose from a ‘whip-snapper’, a layabout who literally snapped whips while idling the time away.
There was an earlier term ‘snipper-snapper’, reserved for a selfimportant young man.
John Ford, in his 1625 The Fancies Chaste And Noble, wrote, ‘Thou’rt a prick-eared foist... a kanck, a snipper-snapper!’
The earliest known use of ‘whippersnapper’ is in the Irish author Richard Head’s narrative on the life of the highwayman Francis Jackson – Jackson’s Recantation, 1674: ‘Have a care of Malbrough Downs, there are a parcel of whipper Snappers have been very busie there of late.’
Both ‘snipper-snapper’ and ‘whippersnapper’ are examples of reduplication, a pair of words that rhyme or repeat a basic syllable sound for effect.
Martin D. Leeves, Eastbourne, East Sussex.